This invention relates to a robot, and more particularly, to a so-called teaching-playback type robot.
Teaching-playback type robots have been known, for example, for painting use, in which the top end of a robot manipulator having a spray nozzle is moved by an operator to conduct simulated painting work on to an object to be painted with simultaneous storing of the contents of the work in a memory device (generally referred to as teaching operation) and, after the storing of all of the contents of the work, the contents of the work thus stored are then read out and the actual painting work is conducted automatically following the read out of the contents of the work (generally referred to as playback operation).
In the conventional robot of such a type, however, the capacity of the memory unit has to be extremely large for successively storing the contents of the work in the memory device in the teaching operation thus increasing the cost and, in addition, operator's manipulating speed in the teaching operation has to be coincided with actual painting speed, requiring highly skilled techniques for the teaching operation. Further, correction even for a part of the programmed contents of the works has been conducted by repeating the teaching operation again and storing all of the contents of the work including partially corrected contents again to the memory device. In view of the above, conventional teaching-playback type robots have certain definite drawbacks.
On the other hand, it may be desired for the robot to conduct painting work on objects which are conveyed successively, but complicated structures are generally required for performing teaching and playback operations to such moving objects and no satisfactory techniques have been proposed yet.